Bonum Certa Men Certa

Let's Encrypt is Garbage, Albeit It's Disguised as 'Free' Privacy

Earlier this year (an unexplained incident, still): Techrights Urges Readers to Ask the Linux Foundation's Let's Encrypt (Backed by Companies That Give the NSA Back Doors) Some Hard But Legitimate Questions

Let's Encrypt address

Let's Encrypt LF connection

Let's Encrypt and LF

The signature for Let's Encrypt

Source: The latest-available IRS filing. See the IRS filing in full [PDF] for a lot more.

Summary: The 'Linux' Foundation in 'privacy' clothing is more like a monopoly disguised as non-profit while taking money from monopolies (to do their biddings in the most surveillance-intensive country in the entire world)

Yesterday we asserted (and then explained why) today's Linux Foundation -- or LF for short (one way to avoid the misleading name) -- works for monopolies, not Linux. It uses the "Linux" brand to market itself.



One thing that came from LF is a CA that issues loads and loads of certificates which expire after 3 months.

"The aspect nobody wishes to talk about is that the Let's Encrypt monopoly is reinforcing monopoly and monopolies (Let's Encrypt itself is fast becoming a monopoly and it helps large companies further monpolise and thus centralise the Web)."Look who backs this. Look who funds this. Look where the code is hosted (proprietary Microsoft GitHub). Even the site itself is outsourced to proprietary Microsoft GitHub...

Let's Encrypt is partly funded by Microsoft/GitHub and various other unsavoury companies notorious for their back doors (we can name more than a handful).

So much for security, considering how close Microsoft and the NSA have long been.

But that's not the point. That's not the most important thing.

The aspect nobody wishes to talk about is that the Let's Encrypt monopoly is reinforcing monopoly and monopolies (Let's Encrypt itself is fast becoming a monopoly and it helps large companies further monpolise and thus centralise the Web).

It may sound peculiar at first, but considering the FIDO situation we've seen it elsewhere as well. Much power can be gained -- sometimes money follows -- by making oneself the de facto standard. Then abuse and chaos may ensue, as monopolies need not compete and appease/please anyboby.

Yesterday the Let's Encrypt site published a blog post which bears a rather meaningless if not misleading headline (because a suitable headline would likely upset people right from the get-go).

Put in simple terms, sites that adopt HTTPS with the 'free' (so-called, hence scare quotes) Let's Encrypt will become inaccessible to a lot of visitors. In the name of fake 'privacy', which does nothing about spying at the endpoints (like data sales to brokers). People who think HTTPS 'means privacy' should remind themselves that companies like Facebook -- a Let's Encrypt sponsor -- use HTTPS and it does nothing to prevent Facebook from assaulting privacy like Microsoft assaults love itself. HTTPS helps secure things not at the endpoints but during transit.

LWN's headline was vastly more informative than the waffle from Let's Encrypt and it said:

Fallout from upcoming Let's Encrypt certificate changes



As described in this Let's Encrypt blog entry, certificates issued by Let's Encrypt will soon be signed solely by that organization's own root certificate, which is accepted by all modern browsers. There is one little catch, though: versions of Android prior to 7.1.1 (released in late 2016) do not recognize that certificate and will start throwing errors. "Currently, 66.2% of Android devices are running version 7.1 or above. The remaining 33.8% of Android devices will eventually start getting certificate errors when users visit sites that have a Let’s Encrypt certificate. In our communications with large integrators, we have found that this represents around 1-5% of traffic to their sites." There appears to be little to be done about this problem other than to encourage owners of older Android devices to install Firefox.


It quotes part of what Jacob Hoffman-Andrews said, followed by: "Hopefully these numbers will be lower by the time DST Root X3 expires next year, but the change may not be very significant."

Next year?

Let's Encrypt moneyJust one year? Hardly anything would change by then. See the comments in LWN. One person said: "Rooting old phones requires erasing them. I'd hazard that the users of those phones would be cautious about that (data loss), as opposed to current phones (loss of access to baking and game apps)."

They're pushing people to buy new so-called 'phones' (spying devices). And further down it says: "Plausibly deniable way to send users up the upgrade treadmill. C'mon, Android users! Throw away your devices, again!"

Why would anyone wish to turn away users in the name of fake 'privacy' or dubious levels of confidentiality? If the Let's Encrypt folks somehow hand over keys to the government (e.g. under Trump NSLs), then what good is it really? It not only helps monopolies but also militant empires.

Let's Encrypt may claim to be a liberating and democratising force, but that's assuming it does what it says on the tin.

An encrypted systems specialist elaborated on this. "Trust should only exist between the provider of data and the consumer," he said to us. "Any other third party introduced into the system is an attack against privacy, security, and autonomy. Don't let quacks convince you otherwise."

"The discussion should lead the user to devices and browsers that let them have a local list of public keys they trust. That's the basic function of TLS anyways. The concept of a CA needs to be binned altogether. You can still trust certs yourself on Firefox. Just ignore the browser warnings."

He added that "what [we] should tell users is to start trusting self-signed certificates in favour of certs provided by CAs. Let's Encrypt is a vehicle for maintaining the trust monopoly. It's free so people blindly just use it, without realising they're just further entrenching the trust monopoly. Anyone can generate TLS certs with openssl (or even more secure libressl; libressl is by the OpenBSD team. It's the best TLS software around. There's nothing magical about TLS certificates. If someone has something like WordPress, you can just use libressl to generate your own certs and then put a banner on the top of your info page on your website asking users to trust whichever cert you generated and hasn't expired [and] what we really need in a truly security-and-privacy respecting Web browser is one that rejects all TLS certificates by default and only accepts certs the user agrees to accept. Right now the situation is the opposite of what it should be. Users have monopolised "trust providers" dictate which certs they accept. Kind of how you do when you set up SSH. You block all public keys by default and only allow ones you trust yourself. And you, the user, have full control of your trust system. Delegation of trust mechanisms to third parties is flagrant stupidity in any security system. In summary: right now you, the user, have a dictator ordering you whom you can and cannot trust. This is absurd. Your devices and software shouldn't stop functioning when you want to take back control over your trust. The current system is a dictatorship of CAs forcing people to give up control over their trust (and by extension, their security and privacy). These are abuses against articles 12 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

Don't forget that Let's Encrypt is US-based and monopolies-backed. They're not a charity, not a nonprofit either. They have motivations that aren't altruistic and we know who pays the salaries (not friends and allies of privacy, sometimes foes of it). They call themselves "[a] nonprofit Certificate Authority providing TLS certificates to 225 million websites." The Linux Foundation also calls itself "nonprofit", but we know that's a lie.

The encrypted systems specialist said he "[had] forgot[ten] to mention one other big point. The fact you can't block CAs in your browser and certain certificates is evidence enough of the malice behind the design and implementation of the web today."

The incidents of March (earlier this year) could be seen as an eye-opener. They never bothered explaining why they had issued millions of bad certificates, which they later revoked; they didn't explain what actually caused this incident and what was done about it.

As a side note, the SELinux project of Red Hat (now IBM) used to issue monthly declarations about no government interventions/involvement. Those stopped years ago. What is it they say about canaries?

"I have never seen any letsencrypt documentation say they have canaries," oiaohm wrote this morning, "and if you know USA law on the matter canaries is basically false. One of the USA encrypted email systems that is shutdown now had canaries and when the NSA with NSL stepped in they were forbid from using them. So their end users knew nothing."

A lot more discussion regarding this issue can be found in tomorrow's IRC logs.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Techrights Will Never Capitulate to Threats From Microsofters
Set aside violence against women and all sorts of other things; it's not about personal issues
The Microsoft-Led Open Source Initiative (OSI) is Hurting, It'll Try to Hurt Its Critics and Exposers Now
The OSI's chief meanwhile issues a bunch of meaningless waffle, a sort of "damage control" or "face-saving" platitudes
 
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: Leaking Information of Members (Even in 2025)
More nonsense about Hey Hi (AI), which OSI has been openwashing on Microsoft's payroll
Recommended New Article From Dr. Andy Farnell and Some Site Miscellany
Andy says he and his daughter successfully avoid GAFAM
Links 20/03/2025: Executions in China and Crackdowns on Science in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/03/2025: Ubuntu Shafting Common Sense and Blocking of Bots of the Net
Links for the day
Links 20/03/2025: IBM Layoffs (Thousands Reportedly Laid Off) and Lots More Corruption in the White House
Links for the day
Apple is Still an Enemy of Open Standards and Software Freedom
Apple did not get any more benign
Gemini Links 20/03/2025: Wanting the Future Back and "Society That Lost Focus"
Links for the day
Fake Articles About GNOME
betanews again
Richard Stallman's Personal Site Says He's Looking for More Opportunities to Speak in Europe
He does not charge people for the talk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 19, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Debian Pregnancy Cluster, when I stopped using IRC
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Mass Layoffs at IBM Confirmed
Thousands believed to have been laid off
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, cybersecuritynews.com, gbhackers.com, and techmonitor.ai (Fake 'Articles' About "Linux")
Almost all of them (75%) show up in Google News
Is Ubuntu Compromised? Push Away From GNU and GPL Led by Army Officers.
Perhaps people should ask Canonical what the thinking behind it was...
Gemini Links 19/03/2025: go-gopherproxy and 'Small Web' as Self-expression
Links for the day
Links 19/03/2025: Attention's Cost and Media Still Besieged by Dictatorships
Links for the day
Phoronix Seems to be Trying to Kill Discussion About "Asahi Lina" and the Anti-Torvalds Brigade
Our informed guess is that by reporting this news Phoronix got caught up in flamewars that divide and fracture the community
Claiming to Love What You Reject or Seek to Totally Own, Control
The Russia analogy is political
LinuxTechLab Became Just LLM Slop and SPAM
Another dead (former "Linux") site
The Rust Song
It's about control
Facts on the Case Already Disclosed by US Authorities
NGOs in the UK (several keep abreast of this, judging every recent move) are truly unimpressed
The Times Group (and The Times of India) Basically Died Again
This time a death by LLM slop/plagiarism
The Death of The Economic Times (India Times): LLM Slop Presented as 'Articles', Containing Errors and Revisionism
They'd be better off shutting down operations with some dignity than resort to bots giving the false impression (illusion) of authorship
In Belgium, Android is Finally Measured as Bigger Than Windows
In Belgium, the lobbying capital of Microsoft, it wasn't easy to get there
"Rust People" Are a Threat to BSD Too (the Licence Isn't the Main Issue, Nor is the Proprietary Microsoft Hosting)
BSDs aren't written in Rust, so BSD developers should buckle up
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 18, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Sami Tikkanen Explains Rust Language and Its Goals
"Sompi" (the nickname of Sami Tikkanen) has weighed in
Links 19/03/2025: Gardening Season and the Web Without an Audience
Links for the day
Mauritius: Windows at All-Time Low, Down From 96% to 17%
Put in simple terms, people choose to connect from the "phone" (running Linux), not some laptop running Windows
Many IBM Layoffs Reported Today in Europe and North America
there's definitely a lot going on today
The GNU Manifesto is 40. Here's the Original Print (1985).
Some unpleasant people want to replace GNU with Microsoft-controlled (GitHub) Rust copycats
Unixmen Seems to Have Died After Turning Into a Slopfarm and Spamfarm, Is LinuxSecurity.com Next?
Better to not publish anything at all than to resort to fake garbage.
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: More People Begin to Speak Out
Kuhn set another bonfire ablaze
Links 18/03/2025: ‘Meritless’ Defamation Suit Thrown Out, InterDigital Software Patents Headed for the Bin Too
Links for the day
These Strange Web Statistics From The Bahamas Show Windows Falling From 93% to Less Than 5%
There are about half a million there
Gemini Links 18/03/2025: Weather and Resisting "MAGA"
Links for the day
Links 18/03/2025: New Apple Blunders and Windows Disliked by Users
Links for the day
Once Again 'Losing Track' of Who the Clients Are, The Serial Harasser and Strangler from Microsoft
Timing is everything
2025 Rumours of IBM Layoffs in Marketing Likely True, Online Powwow Drops More Clues
Expect over 10,000 layoffs this year (at IBM alone)
Android (With Linux) Rises to Record Highs in Hong Kong and in Macao
Looking quite bad for Microsoft
Distractions. Distractions Everywhere.
distracting from the real solution
EPO Concerns About the Education and Childcare Allowance Reform (ECAR) and School Liaison Officer (SLO)
The public deserves to know as it impacts thousands of families
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 17, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, March 17, 2025